My 5th Christmas

…The sun was setting on another Christmas Day and, as our car hastened through the deserted streets, the sun was about to set on my dog Smokey’s life. Dad was at the wheel, foot hard on the accelerator, anxious to get us to the vets as fast as possible, whilst Mum cradled me and I cradled Smokey in the back seat.

     There had been something wrong physically with Smokey for some weeks and this Christmas Day we were about to realise the full fatal toll it had taken on his large, athletic body.

     ‘Hurry Dad, please hurry!’ I pleaded. Seeing the pain in Smokey’s eyes was flushing water out of mine in great floods.

     ‘It’s okay Jimmy, we’re here now,’ he answered, as he screeched the car to halt, scorching smoking tyre tracks onto the car-park concrete.

     ‘Thank God!’ Mum exclaimed, as she caught sight of the doctor’s car, ‘he’s already here’.

     We dashed through the doors to the surgery, Dad now carrying Smokey, as Doctor Soberman beckoned us over to the table.

     ‘I think it would be best if you wait outside little Jimmy,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do all I can.’

     I said goodbye to Smokey and watched with Mum, unaware that the doors were closing on Smokey’s brown bulk for all time.

     It felt like an eternity but Dad and Dr Soberman finally appeared, bearers of the most tragic of news.

     The same places were assumed in the car on the way home, all except one, where there was nothing but air where Smokey had been just an hour earlier.

     ‘I can’t believe he’s really gone,’ I muttered from behind cheeks sodden with tears. Mum reassured me, holding me tighter and pecking a kiss onto my moistening cheeks. And then Dad said this:

     ‘Yes Jim, he has. But he will live on, in your memory. As long as you keep his memory alive he will be with you. A dog is for life as long as you remember that. As long as you remember to keep him in your heart, and in your mind…’